List Price: $15.99
Sale Price: $13.51
Today's Bonus: 16% Off
I wanted something solar and bright to light up an outdoor Mr. Potato Head at night. This Malibu light caught my eye here, but at the time isn't/wasn't available on Amazon. As luck would have it, I spied this product on the shelves of Home Depot and bought one there.
According to the package this light is 12x brighter than a standard 1.2 lumen solar light and lasts nine hours with a full sunny day charge. A ground stake (not a ground steak) is included, and it even is backed with a two year LIMITED warranty.
So how is this solar spotlight with its advertised 15 lumens of light output. It is spectacular! Before planting this light in the ground, I carried it around the dark yard as a flashlight. It throws off more light by far than any other solar light I've ever owned. In fact, I am so impressed by the powerful output of this light that I may buy several more to avoid turning on the bug attracting back porch light when I let the dogs out.
I highly recommend this spotlight that has exceeded all of my expectations.
Click Here For Most Helpful Customer Reviews >>
We wanted to illuminate some new trees in our back yard. I did not want to run low voltage wire and deal with power transformers so I started looking at solar landscape lights. We did not need them to be very bright since they are just to create a nice effect. More important than brightness was "color". We don't like the bluish white light that most led lights emit. It seems cold and harsh. These Malibu lights are one of the only solar lights i have been able to find with a light color of 3000 degrees K., which is a nice warm yellowish color. Most solar led lights produce a color around 6,000 degrees K which is bluish white. (here's a link to a Kelvin color temperature scale- ).My problem with most of the lights with the solar panel mounted directly to the light is that optimal light placement and optimal panel placement are rarely the same place. In our situation, the preferred location for the light did not provide good sun exposure for the panel during the day. I know there are solar kits with separate lights and panels, but none of the ones i found had the color light i wanted. Therefore, I modified these lights by removing the panel from the light housing and putting a 10' wire between the light and the panel. I modified some old tent stakes to mount the panel on. Now i can locate the panel in a nice sunny spot while keeping the light where my wife wants it. So far, they are working nicely. We will probably purchase a few more for the front yard. Hopefully someone will come out with a kit with separate lights and panel that use the "warm white" led's.
Best Deals for Malibu 8501-0604-01 Solar Spotlight, Black
I didn't buy it here. I bought it at Home Depot and I thought the cost was low enough to warrant the risk. I put it on the ground with the solar panel getting direct sunlight at around noon time. I didn't expect very much from this spot light as I haven't really be pleased with the previous solar based spot light. I was wildly surprise at the amount of WARM light that the 3 LEDs put out. It is as good as some of my other wired lighting and yet so easy to install. I love it!Honest reviews on Malibu 8501-0604-01 Solar Spotlight, Black
This is worth the $3 premium over a very similar looking model by another manufacturer. The Lithium Iron Phosphate battery in the Malibu model is the cutting edge of rechargeable battery technology in this kind of application. Less toxic, more stable, quicker charging, more power, better "charging behavior," etc., compared to NiCd and NiMH. I base that supposition based on a couple hours of wikipeda research. Do your own if you're curious.It's plastic, but well made, the solar cell captures a surprising amount of indirect light and shady area light, mine only gets a few hours of direct sun a day and still last from sunset to midnight or so, at the minimum. If it was in the sun all day I'm sure it would last till sunrise.
At first I tried to do some artistic tree "uplighting," but it's just not designed for that and can't throw that kind of light. . .instead I repositioned it and am using it as supplementary light on my front door where it's fantastic.
Very happy especially with the price point considered. Will be buying more.
** Update now after a few days repositioned (with a good few hours direct sunlight) at my front door, I'm downright impressed with this light, especially for the money. I got up at 4am to let the dog out and saw that the light was still going on full brightness. . .I've never seen a solar light (that I've tried) last that long, anywhere in my yard. It very nicely compliments the hard-wired lights that are on the sides of my door. And I agree with another reviewer who stated that the color on these is pleasing. It is definitely more like 2700-3000*K temperature range instead of the 4100*K+ a lot of LEDs and florescent bulbs tend to be. I will be ordering more. I wish they made a model with a detachable panel so I could position the panel and the light several feet or yards away from each other.
*** Update one year later, still pretty good, but solar panel has become pretty clouded in the last year and between that and the battery cycles it definitely is not as bright, nor does it shine as long as it did when new. At a sub $20 price point though, this is to be expected to some extent.
Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Malibu 8501-0604-01 Solar Spotlight, Black
Just received the light yesterday and worked right out of the package. This is only day one and I'm impressed at how bright the light is on my flag (10' Pole with 3'x5' US Flag). Light came on at around 8:30PM, when I got up at 3AM it was still on and continued bright until the sun came up. Will update my review as to how it's working in a couple weeks.Update 18 April 2012. The light still comes on when it gets dark but unfortunately it now only stays on for 3 hours. Here in Texas we have plenty of sun so no reason it can't get a full charge.
0 comments:
Post a Comment